Without limiting the scope of the invention, the background of the invention is described in connection with computer systems for facilitating transactions electronically. Currently, the negotiations process for agreements is cumbersome and time consuming. Agreements must be sent back and forth to parties, suggestions to modifications made, and sent back to the other party for review. Parties must carefully track changes, and when all parties agree, signatures made. Often times, these parties have council, who also must get in the loop. This is time consuming, labor intensive and costly.
Traditionally, sellers of Intellectual Property (“IP”), such as inventions, would enter into some sort of non-disclosure agreement with the potential buyer of the IP. This was done for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:
“Signed” proof of the exchange of the invention idea having taken place, thusly providing protection to both parties; the inventor, for his or her invention being stolen and for the buyer, not jeopardizing similar R&D projects or inventions that they may be working towards.
The promise of “secrecy” that the buyer entered into with the inventor protected the inventor from violating public disclosure covenants relating to his or her desire to file for a patent in the future.
As the above two scenarios may illustrate, some of the dilemmas in the exchange of the idea or invention seem pretty obvious, but upon further examination, there are subtleties of the exchange that occur during the normal course of skilled business transactions, that if captured in an automated method, could prove to be quite useful and therefore have commercial value. Rather than discuss these subtleties in detail here, they will come out, by example, as the invention is disclosed and those examples are made.